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By: Jason Giacchino
Email:
offthepegs@atvsource.com
August 2006
Anatomy of an Off-road
Racetrack
While pouring over one of my many monthly
periodicals, I was struck with a realization. It
happened to be a popular performance automotive
magazine and one of its articles was entitled
Anatomy of a Racetrack. The article focused (as
one would expect from a car magazine) on the
design successes and failures of various Formula
1/ Grand Prix race tracks. Now I don’t know
about you, but I personally spend a good deal of
each season attempting to create a race track of
my own. I imagine it is written somewhere that
one of the requirements to becoming a successful
ATV racer is to have access to a private track
with which to train and master (or at least
access to a Playstation 2 and the ATV Off Road
Fury games).
 Anyway, the article went on to highlight many
failed designs which, in car racing, has a lot
to do with too few curves and too many
straights. Off-road tracks typically follow a
different set of rules which involve placement
of jumps, rhythm sections, whoops, and line
selection options. Thinking back to my own track
designs, some of the more impressive layouts
happened nearly by accident. You see very rarely
do I have access to heavy equipment and the few
friends I have capable of wielding a shovel are
often too busy coming up with clever excuses to
actually lend a hand. As a result of my meager
efforts (see wheelbarrow, shovel, rake and ho)
my practice track often falls short of even my
expectations in the off-season.
Most of the obstacles found within have been
built over such a long period of time, Earth
orbiting satellites could release time lapsed
photos of the gradual land changes and it would
appear like nothing more than natural erosion.
However, over a period of about eight seasons,
the layout of my practice track is finally
coming into its own. I’ve got a nice 45 foot
double amidst several singles and kicker bumps,
a fifteen foot section of whoops, a twelve foot
step up, five left hand berms, and two right
handers. The end result is pretty tight and
technical, perhaps even to a fault if the auto
magazines were to review it. Fortunately I
rarely have spectators to worry about and it
serves more to master carving tight lines and
finding smooth rhythm than it does to provide
bar to bar race action.
What had me thinking, however, was when the
article got into some of the considerations a
track designer needs to include while drawing up
the initial designs: Drainage, wind direction,
noise ordinance, crowd accommodations, ample
lane area for side-by-side racing. It’s really
no surprise that early track designers were
highway contractors trying their hand at a yet
young and unproven concept. I somehow overlooked
each of these factors when I set out to design
my own practice track. About the only factor I
took into consideration were the boundary lines
of the property. Other than that I devoted very
little attention to ensuring proper drainage, or
making lanes wide enough for multiple quads to
bang bars side by side. Were these failures in
design disastrous? Well, no but that had more to
do with luck than anything else. Drainage isn’t
an issue thanks to a very rocky base that
refuses to hold water and since rarely does
anybody come to watch my buddies and I practice,
side by side lead swapping isn’t all that
important.
I guess the moral of the story is that it’s
probably for the best that I don’t plan on
designing race tracks professionally any time
soon. That and I have to give my local public
ATV course designers a lot of credit. Taking a
moment to recollect about some of my favorite
tracks reveals that the beauty in what makes
them so perfect goes nearly unnoticed until one
stops to consider the soil quality, the spacing
between obstacles, the invisible drainage pipes,
and the wide lanes ideal for genuine racing. I
suppose it’s far too easy to get caught up in
the adrenalin, the preparation, the crowd noise,
and the opponent you’re gaining on steadily with
each passing lap, to notice the little
preparations that have gone into the track’s
design scheme.
To all of you riders and racers out there
with tracks of your own please email pictures of
your soil-based masterpieces and I’ll share some
of the best with ATV Source readers in a future
column. Be sure to include your name and state.
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